POLITICS

TWO CLINTON AIDES RESIGN TO PROTEST NEW WELFARE LAW

By ALISON MITCHELL

Published: September 12, 1996

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11—
Two of the Clinton Administration's senior officials on welfare policy resigned today in protest of the law President Clinton signed last month ending the Federal guarantee of cash assistance to the nation's poorest children.

The departure of the two officials, Mary Jo Bane and Peter B. Edelman, both assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, illustrated the continuing deep divisions in the Administration over Mr. Clinton's decision to approve the Republican welfare legislation, which the President said had ''serious problems'' but was ''the best chance we will have for a long, long time to complete the work of ending welfare as we know it.''

In a memorandum today to his staff, Mr. Edelman, a longtime friend of the Clintons, said: ''I have devoted the last 30-plus years to doing whatever I could to help in reducing poverty in America. I believe the recently enacted welfare bill goes in the opposite direction.''

Ms. Bane, in an E-mail message to colleagues noted that her ''deep concerns'' about the welfare bill ''have led me to conclude that I cannot continue to serve'' in the job.

Mr. Edelman and Ms. Bane did not make clear why they waited until three weeks after Mr. Clinton signed the bill, and both declined through spokesmen to be interviewed.

Another high-ranking official of the department, Wendell E. Primus, quit last month, saying that ''to remain would be to disown all the analysis my office has produced regarding the impact of the bill.'' Mr. Primus's studies had estimated that the law would push more than a million children into poverty.

The latest resignations came just as the Administration and the states are embarking on a difficult and potentially wrenching effort to move millions of adults from welfare to work. The law gives states vast new powers to run their own welfare programs with lump sums of Federal money. It also sets a lifetime limit of five years on benefits to any family and requires most adult recipients to work within two years.

Mr. Clinton in recent days has implored churches and businesses alike to use welfare benefits the states could give them as subsidies to create jobs for welfare recipients, saying that to make the transition from aid ''morally defensible and practically possible, there has to be work for those people to do.''

State officials attended seminars on the new law in Washington this week and said they were frustrated by their inability to get authoritative interpretations of its provisions from Administration officials.

While the resignations potentially free the Administration to put in place a team more supportive of the new law, they also deprive the Department of Health and Human Services of expertise at the moment when it is most needed. Ms. Bane, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families was part of the original team that Mr. Clinton assembled in 1993 to devise his own welfare proposals, and it is her office that will perform the mammoth task of reviewing state plans to carry out the new law.

''These are three extremely talented people,'' said Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research organization that opposes the welfare law. ''I don't think there's any question that their departure is a major loss for the Administration.''

Representative E. Clay Shaw, Jr., a Florida Republican who was a main force behind the welfare bill, also expressed disappointment at the resignations, saying he had held Ms. Bane ''in the highest esteem for her abilities and honesty.''

But Tony Blankley, a spokesman for Speaker Newt Gingrich, said the crucial question now was ''what is the President of the United States going to do, not what some assistant secretary of the agency going to do.''

''If he's committed to the law,'' he said, ''he'll hire the people to administer it. If he's not, Bob Dole, we know, will enforce the law.''

With the resignations to be effective on Sept. 28, the Administration moved quickly to elevate the deputies to Mr. Edelman and Ms. Bane to be their acting replacements. Officials said Jack Ebeler would be named the Acting Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, and Olivia Golden would be named named the Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families.

For Mr. Clinton, the resignation of Mr. Edelman was a particular rebuke because he and his wife, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund, had been among the Clintons' oldest and most loyal supporters in the capital. But over the last few years Mr. Clinton had backed away from nominating Mr. Edelman to an influential appeals court post and then a lower profile Federal judgeship because of the possibility of a confirmation fight.

And Mrs. Edelman had put increasing public pressure on Mr. Clinton not to sign the welfare measure, calling his decision ''a crucial moral litmus test.''

Officials said that if Donna E. Shalala remained as the Health and Human Services Secretary should Mr. Clinton win a second term, the two Acting Assistant Secretaries would be expected to be put forth for Senate confirmation.

Dr. Shalala herself had been a tenacious critic of the welfare bill, but she argued to angry liberals in recent weeks that they needed to support Mr. Clinton so he could fight for changes in the legislation.

''I promise you this, on behalf of the President,'' she told delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, ''that this bill will be changed and that this bill will be improved in the years ahead until we get it right for American families.''

Dr. Shalala's spokeswoman, Melissa Skolfield, said the department was making no comment about the resignations. Mary Ellen Glynn, a White House spokeswoman said: ''The President values their service. They've done terrific work helping children of this country.''

As a candidate for President in 1992, Mr. Clinton defined himself as a New Democrat with his signature pledge to ''end welfare as we know it.'' When the President finally announced his own welfare plan in June of 1994, it included a two-year time limit on benefits but coupled it with $9.3 billion in investment over five years in an effort to insure jobs for people leaving welfare.

The plan went nowhere, and after the Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, they quickly seized the initiative on welfare, proposing to give the states control of welfare policy and trim spending on the program by $54 billion over six years.

Mr. Clinton twice vetoed Republican welfare proposals, but this summer he faced a political quandary over whether to risk vetoing another one so close to the election and thus allowing the Republicans to accuse him of breaking his promise to change the welfare system.

His decision to sign the bill created deep fissures in his own party. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York praised Ms. Bane today.

''I told her she had done just the right thing,'' Mr. Moynihan said in a statement. ''The only people who come back to Washington are the ones who know when to leave. I look forward to her return.''

Photos: Peter Edelman (Department of Health and Human Services) and Mary Jo Bane (Michael Quan) quit their jobs rather than carry out the welfare cuts President Clinton approved last month.